Password Not Required - The Hidden Risk

🎙️ In this episode, Craig Birch exposes one of the most dangerous and overlooked misconfigurations in Active Directory: the PasswordNotRequired attribute.

Most AD admins assume password policies apply to all accounts — but this hidden flag allows accounts to exist with blank passwords, silently bypassing domain-wide protections. Attackers know it. Many admins don’t.

🔍 What You’ll Learn:• What the PasswordNotRequired attribute really does
• How it overrides password length, complexity, and history policies
• Which accounts are most at risk (including service and trust accounts)
• Why this setting leads to instant compromise with no brute-force required
• How to identify and fix vulnerable accounts with PowerShell🛠️ PowerShell Spotlight:# Detect accounts with PasswordNotRequired flag set

Get-ADUser -Filter * -Properties userAccountControl |

Where-Object { ($_.userAccountControl -band 0x0020) } |

Select-Object Name, SamAccountName

# Optional: Clear the flag (example)

Set-ADUser username -PasswordNotRequired $false

✅ Use this to find and lock down accounts silently skipping your password policy.

✅ Quick Takeaways:

• This setting bypasses all domain password policy enforcement

• Common on legacy accounts, service accounts, or through bad provisioning

• Easy path to account compromise and privilege escalation

• Most AD auditing tools don’t flag it — but attackers know it’s there

• Fix it fast using PowerShell and GPO cleanup

💬 Found this helpful? Like, share, or comment. Want a specific AD risk explained in 10 minutes or less? Drop your request below — we’re listening.

📌 Powered by Guardians of the Directory